by Beau Johnson
Insatiable, I tried to please her but could never keep up. It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t, but Martha, as I said—she only wished to please. I mean, there would be days when my penis fought to leave her mouth. Days! That is how selfless she was, how much she lived to please. I miss her. Really, I do.
Those days are over though. Long gone and dead, like the boy. Had the cancer not taken him, he would’ve been twenty-eight this fall, a man in his own right. He was smart too, smarter than us both. He had his mother’s eyes and the line of my jaw. He never should have died, my son. Actually, he never should have been born, but God’s humor, it ain’t so much in the department of ha-ha if you know what I mean; that Donavan, by dying, became the catalyst which set the killer in me free. His death awakening in me once more the need to render and violate; to balance the violation someone had seen fit to throw our way. As I hurt, so would others. It was only fair. I thought this then. I do not think this now. I have changed. Martha’s death has seen to that.
So twenty years after a woman’s love restrained a beast the beast was back and open for business. And as they say—it was like coming home.
I started small, baby steps, wading into the shallow end of the pool—the woman was in her twenties, pretty, and bound and gagged before she knew what hit her. She screamed as I remembered them screaming and died the very same. The very last light of life winking out of her eyes as I looked down on her from above, her head held softly in my the palm of my hand. Door to door I continued on, selling insurance to those who would least suspect. An acceptable cover, selling insurance—always had been—then as well as later, after what happened with the boy. Made it easier to scout out and take notes of who lived alone and who did not. For five years this continued, five years after the death of our son. It was then I got sloppy.
It’s frustrating, you know—this part of it. I mean, it’s not like I don’t know, but more to the effect that I have a hard time understanding the meaning behind the why of why we embrace it. I mean, seriously, you would have to be out of your fucking mind to attempt such a thing—and hey, yes, I will call a spade a spade, but truly, all of us? Down to the most inept of us? It has to be the narcissism, has to. There is no other way around it. I mean, why else would men like me feel the need to keep some sort of article which relates to their victims? It’s idiotic! No, reckless, foolish. Lacking the minimum amount of common sense the worst of us should have. Is it because deep down we want to get caught? Is this why our judgement is so off? It doesn’t make sense. No, not now that I see it in hindsight. Why would we keep these trinkets in the first place? Is it inherent, brought on by the conceit of us? It would appear so, as history shows—the ones you read about doing it again and again. Some guy collecting ears he kept in a jar to another who would take only jewelry to which he and only he could masturbate to at half past the crazy hour. Doesn’t matter. Not what it is, but that we do it. Some little part of us. It wants to get caught, must. This is all I can figure. Why else had I kept their licenses?
Yep, licenses. That was my thing. Sometimes health cards and the like but only when this was all they had. The cards were bound by elastic and sealed within a Ziploc bag I held in a box in my shed below the second to last floorboard beneath my workbench. Do I have to explain how unwise something like this can be? Sure I had my safeguards, who wouldn’t? But did I honestly think it would ever happen? No, I did not. It did however, and only because of a portrait painted by my son.
Hanging in the main hall leading into our living room, Donavan had created the picture in sixth grade in honor of Martha’s thirty-first birthday. Years later, unbeknownst to any of us, it would become the linchpin which outed me. The string attached to either side of the portrait, the one which hung upon the nail coming out from the wall, this is what broke. And this is what sent Martha out to the shed that night. Did the nail she went to get fall from her hand? Is this what happened? Did it roll? I don’t know. Still, I have a hard time understanding why she would be in the shed looking for nails when all she needed was a new length of string from the drawer in the kitchen. No matter. What’s done is done and what’s found was found. What upsets me is how it affected her. I pictured her finding the licenses and at first denying it once she realized what they could signify. After that, knowing Martha, she would try to rationalize what she was dealing with. It wouldn’t happen. No, not if I knew Martha. Which I do…did. Later, I would find the trail she left on her laptop. The one which had linked some of my trips to some of the towns and cities the licenses said the woman were from. Quite the investigator my little Martha had become, doing all this in between the time I called to check in—which I always did whenever I was on the road for more than two days at a time—to the time I returned. It was then, as I spoke with Martha over the phone, that I knew something was off. It was minute but there, her octave just shy. These are the things you know after thirty years of marriage, things that only one other could ever come to know.
Anyway, I knew she knew but did not let her know I suspected. I couldn’t, not then, when the phone I was on was the only device I had at my disposal. I drove home instead, speeding six hours straight. During this time was when I decided not to kill her, certain that reason and the assurances I would give would be enough to see me through. I would tell her I had stopped once before and that the reason for this had been her. This worked in my head better than it did in real life, as she agreed with me in every scenario I could conjure, especially the one where she fully understood and realized that the death of our son had shaken me so much that I could not be blamed for lashing out at the world as I did. That it, not me, was at fault because of what it had done to me. She would even go so far in saying it was on par to what my father had put me through growing up on the farm.
Fantasies, all of it—the mind of a madman—except for the truth which of course came next.
As I rounded the corner which led to our street, I knew I was taking a chance that Martha had instead called the police once she found my souvenirs and I was moments away from driving myself right into the walls of a cell which would before too long end with me strapped to a chair. Either way, I was beginning to have the feeling that I had become more than fucked from Sunday.
Headlights off, I continued forward, around the bend. All was quiet. All was dark—save for our bedroom where the light was still on. Inside, I checked her computer and found exactly what I thought I might. Martha had been busy since last we spoke. Next I went out back and checked the floorboard in my shed, the one which held my secret. Sure enough, the fine dust of shavings had been disturbed. Pulling out the box, I examined the cards. Close, but the order was incorrect. Allison Jersey was before Brenda McClellan, not after. Martha had tried, yes, but failed. It was time to talk.
Onwards I went, upstairs, toward the bedroom and Martha’s sleeping frame. On her side as always I watched her steadied breaths, looked on and reminisced. How would I begin? What would be the magic words? From the beginning, then—this is what I thought as I spoke her name to wake her. Instead she attacked me; verbally, not physically, though it might as well have been. If I didn’t know it before, I sure as hell knew then: my wife’s compassion—it was not a thing to be trifled with. Martha had always been a strong and upfront person, this you know. What I might have failed to interpret was how deep and far that compassion for any one person could go. Me I’ve explained. How she suppressed in me this need to kill, if only for a while. She approached this in many ways: physically, emotionally and intellectually. But not just for me. For everyone she met in life, be it family, friend, or foe. It was elegant; she was elegant, the way she conducted herself. What I am trying to say is that I was caught off guard as I stood beside our bed and she roared up out of it, her rage at the ready, full and dark and much like venom. Shocked, I stepped back, trying to gain my bearings. It was extraordinary what I was witnessing, unprecedented, from a woman who in the previous thirty years had not so much as furrowed a brow at me. A brow! She had raised her
voice, sure, who hasn’t? But the display I was beholding, the ferocity of it…
“Seriously, you are my husband!” she said, her voice all fury, her face much the same. “How is it that you are even capable of this? You’re nothing! We’re nothing! The meek—isn’t that what you said? That we’d inherit the earth? Murray, you’re a goddamn insurance salesman for Christ’s sake! How can something like this be inside you?” Those words haunt me still, the last she ever spoke. And do you know why? Would you like to? I thought you might. You’ve come this far, why not a little further? It was the look, you see, the one which danced upon the steel now set in the green of her eyes. I knew it, and I knew it well. It was the look every woman I have ever taken saw in my eyes before they died by my hand.
If I did not end Martha then she was very much about to kill me. This is what I want you to know; this is what I wish to confess.
Which brings me back to the question I began with: Could it be covered up?
However, before I go on with that, I want to get something off my chest. Something I realized not long ago. It has to do with my unchecked narcissism. I say unchecked now because I was wrong before, earlier when I said I did not need the admiration associated with my condition. I am a big enough man to admit this. Why else would I have told Martha how I liked to do them? Why else would I leave a signature every single time? Yeah, it’s about me. All of it. Always has been, always will be. Did you know they even have a name for me? Did I mention that? “The Wrecker” is what the papers say—what I’ve been deemed. It’s because I destroy their faces, you see. Not only, but mostly. The other reason is because I remove the jaw—the bottom half, taking most of the neck as I rip down to pull it free.
So…could it be covered up; this is what I’d been thinking at the beginning as I began to write this. Is that really the kind of question a story should start with? And believe me, this is a work of fiction: nothing in the above sentences actually happening. Did you see that coming? Well, did you? You’re probably thinking I’m fucking with you now, yes? Or someone is anyway. What is happening? could this be what’s running through your head? Or perhaps: Where is the author going with this? Better yet: Have I missed a page, possibly some crucial point of plot? They’re all good questions, every one. But the truth? The truth is now—me and you; what I do. My MO is simple. I watch. I wait. I see. I scout. Gathering information, I see if the person I have chosen lives alone or not. Satisfied, I continue to wait, continue to watch. I look for boyfriends. I look for girlfriends. I watch for parents who visit much too often and stay far too late. After this is when I take it to the next level; when I write a story similar to the one you hold in your hands. I then address it to you, my intended victim, and leave it between your doors. But that’s where I found this is what you might be thinking now. This is when the fear should set in, when you’re almost in the know. I then go back to waiting, observing from somewhere close. I have installed cameras in your house, the type you’ve failed to see. You will look around as you are doing now but still you will not see; they are tiny, these devices, and very state of the art. Once I know you are reading and once I know you’re near the end I slip in undetected and travel up your stairs. Sometimes they creak as I climb and sometimes they don’t. I walk soft; I do, but sometimes still I’m heard. Is that me now is what I’m saying, out beyond your door? My feet now off the rise and stepping ever close?
To those who know me, I am a nondescript white male who blends well within a crowd. For those who don’t, I have taken over two dozen people in my lifetime.
To you I say prepare.
Back to TOC
A Better Kind of Hate
First time I meet Lamar Purdue is in another life.
Squat for his age, he’s thicker at fourteen than the height he’d come to be in all his years.
Little man had a hound dog face and jerry curl eyes. He was polite too, politer than most, which is why things played out the way they did I suppose. All his Yes, sirs and No, sirs music to my rookie ears. The coldness in his eyes I didn’t see until later, at his hearing, and then behind bars. Rookie mistake number one. You cannot fix things. You can only try. Not me, though. Not then. I knew things. I was there to save the day.
I didn’t know a damn thing.
We found Lamar’s mom slumped in a chair, the back of her head now the top of her throat.
“Lamar. I’m Detective Rider. This is Detective Batista. You up for some questions?” I look over at Batista and he gives me the nod. Go ahead, kid, it’s your show. We’d been partners three weeks. Three weeks and this was the first time he’d given me the reins.
“She said her banana…said it tasted like suicide.” Poor kid is what we thought, but that was it, the kid and our investigation giving us nothing more than what it looked like. Three months later I enter another house to find Lamar. He’s on the steps, same hound-dog face, same jet-black eyes. His hands are bound behind his back though, cuffed and ready to go. Doesn’t take me much to figure it out from there.
The foster family he’d been living with had been gutted and then cut into more manageable pieces. By the look of the tub and the bottles of bleach beside, Lamar was looking to try something new.
“Don’t let it wear on you too much, kid. Sociopaths will always be the hardest ones to catch.” Batista was right, but even then, it still didn’t sit.
Kuwait had yet to start.
April and my mother were still alive.
But I could not save lives because I had yet to fully see.
I see now, though. I see very well indeed. So does Lamar, even after I go to town on his eyes.
“That all you got, Rider?” He’d been released this morning, seventeen years to the day we shut him down. From behind I stayed close, followed him to an IHOP just off the 15, picked him up just as he sat to eat. “’Cause they’re worse than you from where I been.” I move forward, toward the chair, and put a bullet through his right knee.
He screams. Curses. Other knee bouncing up and down like mad.
“Man, you was a cop once! This ain’t right!”
“And all you’ve done is?” He stops at that, and then everything is still. We look at each other. I see the future as well as the past. I want to go back. I want to see the murder hidden in that young punk’s eyes. I want to stop what he did. I can’t though, and I know that, just as I know I will never stop what I do; what men like Lamar have forced me to become. I’d like to say its centrifugal force, that something is pushing me on, that it’s pulling as well, but it’s not and I realize as much.
It’s just a different kind of killing. A better kind of hate.
It’s here I begin to cut.
Back to TOC
Knit One, Purl Two
You will never change. I know that now. I mean, of all men, me and you combined, did you really not once envision this playing out as it has? Tough call, agreed, but the look on your face tells me more than you’re willing to admit, I think. ’S’okay, though, we’re almost to the end of it.
Twenty years is what I gave you, Frank. Twenty years without me saying a word. You’d think a thing like that could buy a bloke anything he desired. That silence for freedom could be a pact any sane man could abide. Couldn’t be done though, could it, Frank? Whatever would a man of my skill set do with nothing but time on his hands? Isn’t that what you said that very first day? It was in your Caddy, no? You and your driver idling right outside the gate? For truth, I think this might have been the exact moment I knew we’d end up coming to heads. Not twenty years ago, not when we were the same. And don’t get me wrong, I understand how you see things. But I will not accept everything, Frank. Not after how much I have taken for the team. A man changes is what I have been trying to get through to you. Sometimes this is for good, Frank, sometimes for not so good. The man, he changes regardless. Doing so whether you approve of it or not. You would have none of it though, would you?
Nope. Not one goddamn ounce.
Which brings us to
here, to today, with me awake and you in a chair. I say awake because you’ve done what you intended to do, Frank. You’ve ended up on the wrong side of the fence, sure, but when you go and poke the bear long enough this usually becomes the case. You were the first person I heard use this phrase, Frank. You know that? I say it to prove a point. Blink if I need to elaborate.
The portable wood-chipper stays in the past though, as I’ve said. It was the thing that got me put away—it will never become the thing which places me back. I think you fail to understand this part of it as well. That I would ever want to chance the possibility of going back! You had other plans, as men like you usually do. Angers me, all of it, but all it really does is bring me back to what you wanted.
And that you’ll never change.
And let there be no doubt that this is because of you. My time spent inside changing the man I was into the man I’ve become. In six short weeks you have destroyed all of this, Frank. What do you suppose something like that deserves? What would the old me do? Better yet, what would the old you have the old me do if I were still in your employ? Again, the wood-chipper remains dead, and just between us, I never really thought the machine suited me, not as it should. Always liked to see the look on the faces last a little bit longer than the time it took to send a body through. Surprised? Good. I’d have it no other way.
I can tell you they teach trades on the inside. Crafts as well. You know what it is I learned inside, Frank? Learned to crochet is what I did. Knit one, purl two, and all that happy crappy. Brought peace of mind is what this did. Allowing me to grow as a human being and taking me away from all the shit I used to do.